A North Carolina mother is upset because her preschooler’s homemade turkey sandwich was deemed unhealthy by school officials. Her daughter ate three chicken nuggets instead. Huh?

Turns out the little girl attends a state school and her turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the Carolina Journal.

“The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines,” the Journal reports. “That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables…”

Even lunches brought from home must meet this requirement and if they don’t, the childcare provider must give the student additional food.

In the case of this little girl, her packed lunch was supplemented with the school lunch that included chicken nuggets—and she ended up eating only three chicken nuggets that day. What’s more, the preschooler returned home with a note telling her parents that they owed $1.25 to pay for school lunch.

“She came home with her whole sandwich I had packed, because she chose to eat the nuggets on the lunch tray, because they put it in front of her,” the mother, who asked to remain unnamed, told the Journal. “You’re telling a 4-year-old. ‘oh. your lunch isn’t right,’ and she’s thinking there’s something wrong with her food.”

The Journal reached out to the school district and it sounds like the situation might have been a big mistake. State officials were doing inspections that day and the girl’s lunch was probably pulled due to the potato chips.

“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division, told the Journal. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.”

Mistake or not, this story highlights the USDA’s restrictive rules around school lunches. Where I live in San Francisco, many parents complain about their children’s public school lunches. The hot entrees are assembled at a kitchen in Illinois by Preferred Meal Systems and then put on trucks headed for California. Kids often don’t eat their food and a lot of it ends up in the trash. I’ve heard many parents say, “Why can’t schools just give kids a turkey sandwich and an apple?” The problem is that this wouldn’t meet the USDA guidelines.